You could eat a bowl of oatmeal, a handful of walnuts or a baked potato topped with a heart healthy margarine to lower your cholesterol and you could also stay off medications.

To reduce your low density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad cholesterol, you should eat oatmeal since it contains soluble fiber. Some of the foods that have soluble fiber are kidney beans, apples, pears. psyllium, barley and prunes.

To decrease your total and LDL cholesterol eat ten grams or more soluble fiber a day. Eating 1 1/2 cups of cooked oatmeal provides 6 grams of fiber. If you add fruit, such as bananas, you’ll add about 4 more grams of fiber. You can also eat cold cereal made with oatmeal or oat bran.

To reduce your blood cholesterol you should eat walnuts according to research. You can keep your blood vessels healthy and elastic with you eat foods such as walnuts that are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Almonds and other nuts produce the same effect, however, only eat a handful because nuts are high in calories.

According to researchers, you can lower your cholesterol by eating fatty fish that has high levels of omega 3 fatty acids. You can help your heart by eating omega 3 fatty acids which will lower your blood pressure and the risk of blood clots.

The Food and Drug Administration recommends using about 2 tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil a day to get its heart-healthy benefits. To add olive oil to your diet, you can saute vegetables in it, add it to a marinade, or mix it with vinegar as a salad dressing. You can also use olive oil as a substitute for butter when basting meat. Olive oil contains a potent mix of antioxidants that can lower your “bad” (LDL) cholesterol but leave your “good” (HDL) cholesterol untouched.

Food items such as margarines, orange juice and yogurt drinks can reduce LDL cholesterol by more than 10 percent because they are fortified with plant sterols. By drinking two 8 ounce glasses of sterol fortified orange juice a day gives you the needed 2 grams of plant sterols.

You should think about cutting back on the types and amounts of fat you eat before you make other changes in your diet. Fats will raise your cholesterol. By eliminating fats in your diet you will improve your cholesterol levels and overall health.

For additional information or queries in regards tolower cholesterol diet please send all correspondence to Dr. Sam Robbins